by The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday released its long-awaited proposal to require food manufacturers to provide some nutritional information on the front of packages to encourage Americans and food companies to eat healthier, in line with similar efforts in other countries.
The FDA’s new “Dietary Fact Box” focuses on telling people whether the levels of saturated fat, sodium and added sugars are “high,” “medium” or “low,” as well as the percentage for each serving.
Food and Drug Administration
The proposal is open for public comment for 120 days. It will be up to the new Trump administration to decide whether and how to finalize the rule.
After that, large food companies that make more than $10 million a year will have three years to comply with the rule, according to the FDA. Smaller food stamps have an additional year.
The FDA estimates the food industry will spend up to $154 million over the next decade to relabel its products with the new packaging.
The agency also estimates that many food brands may spend millions more dollars trying to overhaul their products and change their recipes to avoid being labeled as containing too many unhealthy nutrients.
“We anticipate that there may be manufacturers who want to reformulate, perhaps moving from the high category to the medium category or from the medium category to the low category,” said Rebecca Buckner, deputy director of food policy at the FDA Reporter on Tuesday.
Food and Drug Administration
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chosen by President-elect Trump to head the federal department that oversees the FDA, was sharply critical by federal nutrition officials for not doing enough to help Americans eat healthier and cracking down on the food industry.
Kennedy did not address the proposal specifically. A spokesman for Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
Why only saturated fat, sodium and added sugar?
The FDA said only saturated fat, sodium and added sugars must be listed on the packaging. Food manufacturers would not be able to include other nutrients in the FDA’s information box.
They cited research showing that “simpler regimens are easier for consumers to understand” to narrow the list to just these three unhealthy nutrients of concern.
Designs they tested with focus groups that included nutrients Americans need more of, like fiber and calcium, confused participants.
The FDA said it is still weighing whether calories should be included on the label, acknowledging that some food brands already voluntarily list the information on the front.
What determines “high,” “medium,” and “low” values?
FDA officials said Tuesday that levels of saturated fat, sodium or added sugar are considered “high” if they are above 20% in the Daily Value, a measure of how much Americans eat each day in the “reference” diet . The medium was adjusted to 6% to 19% of the daily value. And the lowest value is 5% and below.
Agency officials have used these “high” and “low” guidelines for decades, dating back to the formulation of nutrition labels in the 1990s.
At that time, the authorities decided against including the “interpretive descriptions” in nutritional labeling. But the agency said recent data shows many Americans don’t understand the percentages.
“It’s really based on long-term use,” McKinnon said.
What will it look like?
The FDA says food manufacturers will be required to place the labels “somewhere in the upper third” of the front of the box.
The packaging also uses the same Helvetica font as the nutritional information on the back of the packaging and must meet a number of more detailed rules to prevent it from being too small or obscured by other designs on the packaging.
Some other design decisions were also abandoned during the focus group testing process, the FDA said.
For example, earlier models Using the colors red, yellow, and green to denote different levels resulted in no statistically significant difference in how people interpreted the box.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of days the public comment period would be open. It’s 120 days.
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